Street Fight Daily: $1M for GroSocial, VendAsta/Media Deal

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

GroSocial Nabs $1M to Become ‘Buddy Media For SMBs’ (TechCrunch)
GroSocial will be looking to expand its offerings to small to mid-sized marketing agencies, enabling access to white-label services — something traditionally reserved for larger agencies with more sizable social marketing budgets. Agencies will be able to resell GroSocial services at a price point that begins at $200 per month, making it easy to turn a profit and recoup costs.

Local Newspapers’ Crisis: What Hyperlocal Means — And Why It Works (Guardian)
Ross Hawkes: There is no reason why this new breed of ultra-local sites cannot act as a community news wire, breaking stories for the wider media to delve deeper into. This theory of an almost two-tier journalism, created through partnerships, could lead to a greater sustainability for both traditional media organizations and their newer counterparts, improve the understanding of what local is and inform how best it can be exploited in a journalistic sense.

How Groupon Used Cloud Computing to Speed Growth (Business Insider)
Groupon grew up super fast thanks in large part to cloud computing. It famously started on Amazon’s cloud, not buying much of its own tech until recently. Things are changing now. As Groupon grows, it is moving off of Amazon and into its own data centers, which are being built now, Groupon CIO Alan McIntosh told Business Insider. This lets it control security and reliability.

Does VendAsta-Media Distributions Deal Offer Scalable Local-Social Solution? (ScreenWerk)
Greg Sterling: In an ideal world, verticalized content from SMB social media programs would be mixed with content that SMBs generate themselves. That direct SMB participation can become more direct and frequent over time, as they become acclimated to the “culture of social media.” In other words, these third party programs can jumpstart an SMB social media solution and over time business owners can get more involved as they feel more comfortable.

Second Street/Washington Post: Social Media Remains Key Deals Driver (BIA/Kelsey)
Are Deals still being driven by shares, posts, likes and other social media features in an era of Groupon and Living Social Super Bowl ads? Yes, definitely, according to Second Street Media, which held a Webinar with The Washington Post last week to discuss social media and deals strategies.

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